It was annoyingly sunny and I had forgotten my sunglasses. For some reason, this made me remember the tacky (British word for tasteless) ’80s song “Sunglasses at Night” by Corey Hart. I started singing it in my head (I somehow know the lyrics) as I continued going through the chapter when I remembered a picture of me with sunglasses inside a nightclub with my tiny-weeny afro and looking like a new-age Michael Knight. The story to that picture is that my friends and I were in a nightclub and we had seen some hipster with sunglasses dancing on the dancefloor, so my girlfriend at the time grabbed my sunglasses from inside her purse and I put my leather jacket on, put the sunglasses on, and I ventured into the dancefloor to dance like a maniac (you know that other ’80s song: like a maniac, maniac on the floor). The silly things you do in your early ’20s… And no, I’m not putting that picture up, you cheeky reader.

The inspiration behind my book cover

So yeah, I remembered that picture of mine with sunglasses on, which then reminded me of my afro hair days. Then, by virtue of magic, I thought, “hey dude, a resemblance of that picture would look uber cool in a book cover”. Bingo! I had the cover idea for my upcoming book.

The papers that I had at hand of the book were full of corrections so I could not make a big-enough picture to draw my visualization. I looked through my bag and found my notepad. Like a maniac, I started drafting what my brain was telling me; there was no time to lose, and I was drawing as much as I was scratching off what I had scrambled on paper. Then, I hit it. I found the cover for my book, which looked beautiful in my eyes but realistically was worse than what an 8-year-old could have drawn.

I know, I know. I drew it in less than minute. I’m actually a decent painter, but I simply wanted to put on paper what the basics were. Why? Because I’m lucky to count on my buddy Tabrez, CEO of This Is Cloud, a London graphic design company (among other professional services) who does the super-cool artwork for me. Tabrez is used to creating the artwork for companies from the very scratch, so I had already done half the work for him by at the very least pointing out what I wanted done.

I gave Tabrez green lights to do what he thought was best in terms of the final design, and he managed to get back to me with the artwork almost finished in the first go (that’s how talented the man is). A few emails here and there, and the book cover was done and dusted. My book cover was actually done before finishing the revising of the book manuscript! I thanked Tabrez in the Acknowledgement page of my book, but I’ll thank him again, “thanks dude, you rock!”.

This is what the man created

So there, that’s how the book cover of my book was done. As with many creations in life, great things start from little things; I believe that we’re at all times surrounded by inspiration that can incite us to go on to create great things, but we just don’t perceive it. In The Curly Hair Book, I actually talk about inspiration and how you can retrieve this inspiration from little things so as to go on to achieve a great thing: your awesome mane. Who knows, had it not been an exceptionally sunny day that precise Saturday, I may not have been inspired to come up with this book cover!

All the best, gentlemen.

Rogelio

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Rogelio is the go-to guy when it comes to men's hair. Having embraced his natural curly hair for over a decade while living in 5 countries, Rogelio has learnt a thing or two along the way. Rogelio is the author of the two bestselling men's books "The Curly Hair Book" and "The Men's Hair Book", and his motto when it comes to hair is, "Gentlemen, having a good head of hair should not cost us our testosterone".